Open-plan living may have the solution to disturbing statistics about lack of family life.

IT is Easter Sunday, a prime time for family and friends to get together for Easter egg hunts in the garden, a slap-up lunch and toasted hot cross buns following an afternoon walk.

Not so long ago this was a typical Easter Day, and hopefully it still is for many, but the news that the average household spends less than an hour a day socialising together means Easter Day lunch, like other family meals around a dining table, could be on its way out.

We spend just 58 minutes a day talking to the people we live with, according to a survey carried out for Homebase, but architect Oliver Heath says with a few lifestyle tweaks we can change all that.

The Homebase Design and Wellbeing expert, who is also an adviser for the BBC’s DIY SOS show, is championing the Homebase Life Improvement campaign with tips on creating a more harmonious home and his top tip is to have a dining table, even though he confirms that the dining room is dead.

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The dining room is considered 'dead'

“Having a separate room suggests they are just used on special occasions and they become unloved rooms or dumping grounds,” he explains.

“What’s important is to find ways of getting people together regularly, rather than just passing in corridors or sitting in front of TVs.”

So anybody who has endured the ordeal of builders knocking down walls to create an open-plan kitchendining-living room can pat themselves on the back, so long as your household uses the space to sit face to face and talk while they eat.

“Eating together is an opportunity to sit down and talk and have time together, making sure it is at the heart of the home and something that happens every day,” says Heath.

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A combined open plan kitchen and living room

“The key to happiness is the formation of strong bonds between family and friends and one of the things I am keen to emphasise is the importance of social spaces.”

One couple whose family life benefited from creating just such a room are Kate and Karl Oliver. “With modern living everybody is often doing their own thing in an open-plan room and it is nice to have a central place so you are all still with each other.

Otherwise you find that teenagers will go off to their own room,” says Kate.

“You can be keeping a beady eye on homework while you are cooking a meal, so openplan does seem to work really well. You can all live in the same area and having the sofa there too makes it quite cosy.”

However they are now hoping to downsize because their eldest son Sam is working in Paris and 17-year-old Hal is off to university. Their detached five-bedroom house in Winchester, Hampshire, has three bathrooms and a large garden and is for sale at £1,150,000 with Strutt & Parker (01962 869999; struttandparker.com).

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“It’s a 20-minute walk into town on the last road before you hit countryside,” explains Kate, who says they like the area so much they are keen to live nearby. Not that you need teenage children to enjoy the benefits of a good social space.

Richard and Janet Bullard bought their four-bedroom home near Salisbury in Wiltshire partly because it already had an open-plan kitchen-dining room.

“Whenever the grandchildren are over we have big family dinners and when we have them during the summer it’s fantastic,” says Richard.

“They can be working away on the table while I’m cooking, or they can be making cakes with Janet while some of them are drawing and it all works so well. You can just chat to them and carry on with what they are doing.”

Now the Bullards intend to look for a smaller home in the area and possibly buy a house abroad as well, so their traditional stone-built house with slate roof is on sale for £795,000 with Humberts (01722 443024; humberts.com).

The couple bought the house from a trustee of the Fovant Badges, First World War memorials cut into the chalk hills near the house, and Richard took on his role as a trustee as well as acquiring the long oak table that was already in the home.

“It was at this table on November 11, 2013, that the trustees met to decide how to mark the Fovant Badges centenary this year, and we decided to build a new badge, which is a Flanders poppy,” says Richard, “so the room works well as a meeting area too.”

As for the antique 10-seater table and chairs, Richard says: “We’re open to offers.”